Thursday, March 26, 2009

The Church Monuments Essay Prize

In 2006 the Council of the Church Monuments Society launched a biennial prize of £250 called the Church Monuments Essay Prize, to be awarded with a certificate for the best essay submitted in the relevant year. The aim of the competition is to stimulate more people, particularly those who are perhaps aiming to write on church monuments for the first time or who are not regular contributors, to submit material for the CMS journal Church Monuments. The competition is therefore open only to those who have not previously published on an article in Church Monuments.

The subject of the essay must be an aspect of church monuments of any period in Britain or abroad. The length (including endnotes) shall not exceed 10,000 words and a maximum of 10 illustrations. The prize will only be awarded if the essay is considered by the judges to be of sufficiently high standard to merit publication in the Society's journal.

There were 6 entries for the Essay Prize in 2007, of which the winning essay has now appeared in Church Monuments 23 for 2008 ; another entry is due to be published in vol. 24. The next closing date for entries is 1 January 2010. Please contact the Journal Editors Dr Sophie Oosterwijk (so4@le.ac.uk) or Dr Kerry Bristol (k.a.c.bristol@leeds.ac.uk) for details, or see the Society's website for a copy of the rules and for the guidelines to contributors.